News of the weird

[thecreech]

One beneficiary of Oregon's budget woes, according to an April report in the Salem Statesman Journal, is Jose Leonidas Selva Jr., who had just been arrested behind the wheel of a stolen car, his third arrest in two months. As in the previous arrests, Selva was summarily released two days later because Oregon had no money to pay a public defender to represent him. The limited defense funds were to be used for suspects in violent crimes, and by his third arrest, Selva knew that: "I figured, they're just going to release me. They're not going to hold me. I'm just going to keep doing it." Selva was ordered to return after July 1, when new budget money is supposedly available. [Salem Statesman Journal, 4-19-03]
(2) At Pittsburgh International Airport in May, a 21-year-old mental patient almost effortlessly penetrated several security barriers until he was able to board an empty passenger jet on the runway.
A Southport, England, driver showed a judge a note from his doctor certifying that a blood clot had erased his short-term memory and thus that his 30 parking tickets should be dismissed because he can never remember where he parked. The Texas Legislature passed a bill to ban doctors' performing surgery while intoxicated, except in an emergency. Officials in Lagos, Nigeria, announced that people ticketed for driving recklessly to avoid the city's notorious gridlock will not be able to drive again until certified "mentally sound" by a psychiatric clinic. [The Mirror, 6-17-03] [Houston Press (HB 1592), 6-12-03] [Associated Press, 6-19-03]

Police in Scotia, N.Y., arrested Malinda Kelly in March on several charges but only after they had scurried around for several hours trying to find her "stolen" car and her 3-month-old son, who was inside. The next day, Kelly's story fell apart. Actually, said police, she had forgotten where she had left the car, which was idling, with the child inside, while she ran down the street to burglarize her uncle's home. (She came away with some money, but meanwhile lost her own money when a stranger took her purse from the idling car.) [Albany Times Union, 3-23-03, 3-25-03]

[LT.Hit-Man]

That's fucked up